with the current state of ai usage being what it is I am begging beginner authors (consider this a reminder to myself) to keep writing !! please don’t get bogged down by the freaks trying to convince you that our art form is obsolete !! just write it bad !! write it like you’re fourteen discovering fanfic for the first time but oh my god just keep writing !! okay that’s all
Did you know crows hold funerals ? When one of them passes the flock gathers around. They try to discover the cause of death so they can avoid that particular threat. They say it’s not technically mourning but I don’t believe that. Everything must mourn. Everything is grief.
Today one of my friends from work, my crows, passed away. I feed them when I can, when I have something that won’t upset their little stomachs. I say hi to them every morning. They even wait outside the glass doors sometimes. I like to think they’re looking for me, the way I often search for them.
I saw him on the road when I was leaving and it took my breath away. How could something so awesome, someone who did nothing wrong, knew no evil be taken from me, from his friends, his fledglings ? It’s not fair is it. I cried the whole walk home. My stomach churned. I was profoundly sad, pouring over the loss of my sweet intelligent friend. And it surprised me the way it washed over me-this horribly familiar feeling. Like tar on my skin, inside me. That thing that can’t be cut out, washed off.
My partner and I are going to hold a ceremony of sorts. With flowers and the lot. Writing in my journal I found myself even wanting to pray-to something, to someone, all because this feeling is rearing its ugly head again. Grief.
I don’t know who I talked to. Who I asked to carry my message. I told them I was grateful to have known that bird. I sent love somewhere so he could feel it. In case he thought no one cried for him. I did.
Autism Representation written by an allistic: My name is John Autism and I like the designated autistic interests
unintentionally autistic character written by the creator who hasn't really thought about whether or not theyre autistic: I wish I could be human like the way everyone else is but I know they can tell I'm not. And I know they're right
cw: generational trauma, pregnancy, unhealthy relationship dynamics, mentions of suicide, gore
Authors note: I am incredibly excited to share this piece !! I have been chipping away at it for months and I think it’s the thing I’m most proud of currently - my first completed full length short story. I hope you enjoy !! Please consider reblogging and letting me know what you think xoxo also the painting in the photo is done by me as well lol
THE FIRST TRIMESTER WAS ALMOST BLISS.
All blushing cheeks and congratulations. Everyone is obsessed with you during that time. I still smile a little bit when I think of those first couple of weeks. Even if it is a fake one, or just something going on behind my teeth.
She was so small then. So easy to manage. Maybe manage isn’t the right word. Easy to swallow down, easy to understand; just this tiny thing on the brink of existence. Sort of unremarkable I guess.
I had it easy-easier than most. No morning sickness, normal levels of fatigue, and Elise-in the beginning he was there whenever I needed. If it wasn’t for him reminding me every morning, I don’t think I would have noticed I was pregnant.
I didn’t wake up with it on my mind, not at first-not the baby. I mostly thought of myself. I would check my stomach in the mirror every day. I would ask Elise if he noticed any difference and he would just start doting on me, rubbing my belly and gushing about how excited he was to be a Daddy. I didn’t have the guts to tell him that I felt disgusting.
For the next couple months, against Elise’s warnings, I skipped the books and went straight to the internet. I would spend hours scrolling forums, reading pregnancy horror stories. Hormonal acne, fur like hair, bloody noses, teeth falling out, weird dreams, bizarre cravings. And all of that was just the tip of the iceberg.
It seemed to me the more that I read, that pregnancy was something that happened to you, something that was inflicted upon you. And the people online seemed brainwashed to me. They told their stories of tearing, and bleeding; of baby blues, and mommy make-overs, all with a blinding retroactive glee.
I was horrified. How could any of that be worth it?
I was the one who deserved to be the most afraid. And yet, I was the only one who was afraid. No one was scared for me.
I cried when the bump finally popped. Elise found me in the bathroom that morning and made some joke about “those pesky mood swings.” He gave me a kiss on the head and left for work, left me there on the bathroom floor.
THE SECOND TRIMESTER WAS A HARBINGER. The more I swelled up, the less Elise and I got along. It’s like this baby-this life we had been dreaming about just sort of started to crumble.
Removed from work, too tired to entertain my non-incubating friends; I shut myself away. He went out and I stayed in. He got to drink with his friends and I was pregnant. He got to eat whatever he wanted, do whatever he wanted, be whoever he wanted, and I was pregnant.
Past the initial surprise, after everyone lost interest, once I could no longer see my feet over my swollen belly; that’s when it really started to sink in. And it was like concrete drying over my insides.
One day, I was just pregnant. I was just Claire, who was just pregnant.
I don’t know which one came first-who I started resenting more Elise or the thing inside me.
Months rolled over and by then Elise was basically never home. Sometimes it was because of work, someone was getting promoted and he had to go out for a round of drinks. It was polite, he would say. He wanted to be next in line. We needed this. He was doing it for us, he’d tell me. Then sometimes it was because he actually needed a break from the office.
And sometimes he never gave a reason. He was just gone. He left before I was awake and came home after I was asleep. I’d find out from a text on my phone and by that point he was already gone again.
I spent most of my days lumbering around the apartment trying to stay busy, trying to distract myself from myself. Every movement required intervals of time in between them then.
Get upright in bed, then rest. Go piss for the first of many times that day, and zone out on the toilet. Start coffee, decaf, stir in the cream, watch it spiral, toss the tiny spoon in the sink, cringe at the sound, regret your decision, stare absently into the wet drain. Then rest again.
I got in the habit of staying up late, especially when Elise was out. Part of me enjoyed the tension that hung in the air when he finally got back. I felt like he owed it to me in a way. A small victory.
-
“You know, I’m so grateful for this.” Elise’s mom beamed at me.
“For what?” I laughed.
“This.” She gestured to the little pink cards in front of us. Her’s in a tidy pile and mine with each one tossed on top of the other.
“The party?” I asked, scribbling another name I didn’t recognize on yet another invitation.
The whole ordeal was her idea, a baby shower. Terese, Elise’s mother, had planned all of the baby activities since she found out. She was over the moon enthusiastic. A fucked up part of me thought people would think the baby was hers but I just let her rip into it. Pedal to the floor. I didn’t care. I didn’t feel like it was worth celebrating but I let her dote on me anyways-on the baby.
“The baby stuff. I knew Elise would find a girl. I just didn’t think we’d ever get a grandbaby. I’m just so grateful.”
As if I could hear an audible snap. The thread that connected her to me was severed.
I didn’t want it to be me, Elise, and baby. More and more often I didn’t even want it to be me and Elise. I didn’t want to share my time with Terese. I didn’t want to lose her.
“Glad I could help.” I laughed without an ounce of mirth.
“Oh darlin’ were just so blessed to have…”
I didn’t hear the rest. I let the ringing in my ears wash over me until the world was devoured in it. I couldn’t force the onslaught from my mind; what my own mother would be like in these moment.
No doubt she would be on her third or fourth glass of wine, watching the TV out of the corner of her eye. Nothing to add. Just that look on her face, like I had dared to bother everyone with my pregnancy-with my presence.
I stared down at my lap, at the shirt pulled taut at my stomach and grabbed Elise’s hoodie to hide it.
When I brought everything up to my therapist she told me it was actually pretty common to feel the way I did. Especially towards the baby since I didn’t know it as anything-anyone yet. It was just this thing that was afflicting me, this thing that would eventually tear me in half. What was there to love?
She assured me once it was born I would feel different.
“What if I don’t?” I asked.
“Well, that will be okay too. How are things with Elise, Claire?”
“Same as usual.”
“How so?”
“He’s gone most nights but we have-I have a system.” I laughed lightly, thinking of the monotony.
There was a long silence between us and then she took a deep breath in.
“A system?”
“Yeah, my routine-well I kinda prefer when he’s not home. When he comes back early it just throws everything off.”
Another long pause.
“Does it concern you how baby might also disrupt this routine?” She says the last word like it’s not real, like it’s a ritual or a spell and she’s not buying it.
“Not really.” I was telling the truth. It had been me and baby the whole time. I started grieving my old life when I realized Elise was on his way out and I was going to be alone again. Stuck with this thing.
BY THE TIME I ROLLED INTO MY THIRD TRIMESTER ELISE WAS GONE.
“You seem apathetic. Can I ask-“ My therapist starts the session with a bang.
“Because he’s gone. There’s nothing else to say.” It was ridiculous for her to point out.
“I told him to leave. It’s not like he abandoned me.” I sucked a hangnail between my teeth and tore the length of skin from my cuticle.
-
“I don’t get you. I don’t understand, Claire.” Elise spat.
I hated when he said my name. He only used it when he was angry at me. It was a demotion.
“One minute you love the thing and the next you hate it. You know what I think?”
I stared at him hard and he stared back. There was that spark firing off behind his eyes. In that moment I knew he was going to say something he couldn’t take back, which was all I needed to guiltlessly run away.
Give me permission, I wordlessly begged. I wanted to do it.
“You only say you love it when what you’re really saying is that I don’t do enough.”
Bingo.
“Because you are doing enough?” I was fired up.
“Claire-“
“I’m not finished.” And just like that the spark was out, like a sad little tea candle swallowed by a tsunami.
“You did this to me. You and your family all set on fixing up Poor Claire. You think this kid won’t end up the same? Look at us!” I grabbed my stomach and clenched it like a basketball. “You don’t actually want this baby.”
“Fuck you, Claire.”
“Fuck you too.”
I was pretty sure he was cheating. I was thinking it the whole time but I didn’t say anything. Not even during our fights. It was just this invisible catalyst. Something to tack onto the list of reasons why we didn’t work. It absolved me. So in a way I was glad that he did it-if he did it.
Still, I think something in me, despite my refusal at motherhood, at working on our relationship, was clinging onto that dream we used to talk about. More than the urge to come out of this on other side looking good, I just wanted to rewind. I wanted him to unfuck me. I wanted to be empty. I wanted the freedom to imagine our future without the burden of currently living it. Yet there we were, two completely different people than we were six months ago because of one decision.
If it were humanly possible I hoped he’d fuck himself so hard he’d end up pregnant too. Then I wouldn’t feel so bad about wanting the thing inside of me gone. He’d get another chance; to get what he wanted and understand why I was losing my ever-loving mind.
-
“And then you kicked him out?” My therapist asked.
“Yup.” Wrong. Elise’s family paid for his apartment. I packed all my shit that night and was staying with my sister. She knew how we were. She wasn’t surprised that we broke up. She was surprised that I was pregnant.
“And has he reached out since then?”
“Yeah. He uh-he tried to apologize but I shut it down. It’s over.”
Also wrong. Elise didn’t call. He didn’t text. If he had I wouldn’t have seen it because I blocked him on my way out. He didn’t care where I ended up. I didn’t care where he did either.
“I see. I think it goes without saying that you’re going through a tough time.”
I laughed at that.
“Have you thought about what you’re going to do?”
“With the baby?”
She paused. Probably weighing her options. Deciding how much of herself she was legally allowed to pour into me.
She shook her head gently. “Uh, the anniversary-its coming up.” She looked sorry for bringing it up, but fine with changing the subject.
I shifted in my seat. The baby was pressing its foot so hard against my insides I could see an imprint on the other side of my shirt.
“Fucker.” I mumbled.
“Excuse me?”
“The baby-it’s kicking.”
“Oh right. How is she?” She had that look on her face. The one people get when the conversation shifts from mother to baby. I was so tired of hearing that question. So tired of being on the other end of that look.
“I don’t know the gender.”
Her face dropped. “So, the anniversary-have you thought of what you might want to do to celebrate your mother?”
I had a length of words tangling at the bottom of my throat, clumped together like hair stuck in a drain cover.
“I don’t want to talk about her.”
“Claire, I think its important to address the different stressors-“
I cut her off. “I think I’m done for today.”
There was a time in our lives, early on, before she got sick that my mom seemed to me, what a mother should be. Maybe that chapter ended earlier than I realized. She was spiteful before she got sick. It was just buried beneath her pride and once there was nothing left to conserve, well. The terms and conditions for us changed. The fine print written by mother for daughter, rewritten.
-
I ALWAYS CAME BACK TO SARAH ON BLOODIED HANDS AND KNEES. But no matter the distance, how much money it cost, whatever time had passed, it was never an issue. I was welcomed into her space as if I had been missing from it the whole time.
When I got to Sarah’s complex I couldn’t shake the feeling that this time it would be different, that this baby changed everything. I was ammo loaded into an iron-hot barrel, blasting into an alternate reality. What if I didn’t fit in her living room-me and my bullshit.
“Claire…”
“Why are you looking at me like that? I’m fine!” I shooed my sister away from my bloated stomach and dropped my bags on the floor.
“What are you going to do?” She asked, tugging me towards the couch.
“Well, I’m gonna pop this thing out and-“
“Do you even have anything set up for this baby? Claire-do you still have a job?”
I stared back at her in confusion. As if employment was the most important thing right now.
“I’m on leave…” I replied even though that part should’ve been obvious. “And I’m not keeping it, so.”
She visibly relaxed.
“So you have a family lined up then?” She was getting up, back to business as usual.
I didn’t say anything. Since I didn’t have an answer.
“Claire!”
“What! Your acting like there’s a fucking manual for these things! I didn’t even want it in the first place!”
“Well, you have it now! Why aren’t you freaking out? Why can’t you understand why I’m freaking out?”
“You’re not the one who has to push it out-!”
“BUT YOU’RE HERE! Crash landing on my life again and I don’t have the answers Claire!”
“JUST TELL ME ITS GOING TO BE OKAY!” I said it louder than I needed to. We were both screaming at that point but she didn’t deserve it. I wasn’t angry at her. I never was.
Sarah took a beat, melted into the couch and laid her head on my lap. I felt the baby move like it was reaching out to her.
I imagined it crawling out of me and into Sarah. In my mind the tiny slippery creature grows fur and a long pronged tail. I reach out to warn Sarah but it catches my fingers in its jaws. It hisses then nestles up to her like a wicked housepet.
“It is gonna be okay.” Sarah whispers, drawing me out of my nightmare.
“You mean it?”
“We’ve always figured it out.”
“I know you’re right.”
-
Sarah was the good one. I was reminded of that as I stared at the inside of her apartment. Her home was a nest, a museum of all her interests and hobbies. She had little piles stacked up everywhere; journals and overdue library books, half finished laundry at the foot of the couch, canvases drying on the kitchen counter. It was messy in a way that lends itself to tidiness, as if someone had just hit pause on the footage of her life, not giving her a chance to clean up.
I used to think I was luckier, being the younger of the two of us. There are obvious charms to being the baby of the family. Your parents are more experienced and in that way it’s like each sibling is raised by a different set. Every kid is a product of time; what they won’t do this go around, what they will.
In our case, Sarah got a relatively stable mom and I didn’t. It’s like Sarah left and something inside of her stopped communicating.
-
Living with Sarah was easy. We fell back into a routine quickly. She even helped me get some stuff set up for the baby and we had a little corner of the living room all to ourselves. I was going to find my own place once everything was settled. Once the baby was gone, but until then it was the three of us.
That morning I found her standing in her room, a picture frame in each hand.
“What’chu doin’?” I asked, flopping onto her bed.
“I thought you might want some pictures for your room.” She attempted to make air quotes around the last word. “I like this one.”
“Really?” I said grabbing the frame from her.
A whole panel of Sarah’s bedroom was a shrine of shiny family portraits; an ode to our many different facades.
In each one we’re all wearing coordinating outfits curated by my mother. Sarah always in dresses and myself in slacks. Mom said Sarah’s body was more feminine and therefore more deserving of the gowns with their lace trim, and soft pastel fabric. I especially loved the ones with the high ruffle collars. They made Sarah look like a princess and myself in suit pants and a plain button up like an afterthought. I cried before every photoshoot when I saw my clothes laid out next to Sarah’s. Each year I thought I’d finally earn a dress like hers and each year I was wrong. I hadn’t been good enough. And as it was looking (as I would learn) I probably never would be.
“It needs to look natural.” She’d say to me as I practiced my smile in the mirror.
“This is natural Momma.” I’d deflate in front of the glass. Despite having stayed up the night before forcing my face into different convincing shapes, I had failed again.
“Like this.” Sarah would say, pointing at her perfect teeth. She had gotten braces. I had not.
“Fake it if you have to but figure it out. I’m paying too much for these pictures and I don’t want a repeat of last year.” My mom said.
She pushed through Sarah on her way out of the bathroom leaving behind an almost visible trail of perfume on top of coke sweat.
My cheeks twitched with fatigue.
Sarah smiled at the photo. “Yeah, you look genuinely happy in it.”
“It’s because the she-demon was booted from the studio, remember?”
“I forgot about that-what happened that time?”
“She yanked me by hair a little when I was trying to leave, which made me cry, which made the photographer tell her to take five, bless him.” I laughed uncomfortably as I watered down the details.
Sarah curled at the edges like a dry leaf. It was like I stole the happy from the photo.
“You had just told me a joke.” I said nudging her shoulder.
“What?”
“That’s why I’m smiling,” I said, trying to distract her, “you told me something after she left. That’s why I’m smiling so big.”
“I said-“ Sarah started giggling to herself. “I said she looked like she was gonna shit herself when she made that face. Y’know the one-when she was all worked up.” She was in a fit of laughter at that point.
I knew that face. I knew the shape of wild eyes and a pinched mouth, the way they slotted into my mothers head. Still, I couldn’t help but laugh with Sarah. We flung our heads back and forgot about everything that was scaring us in that moment. We forgot about mom. I forgot about Elise and the baby. Sarah forgot that I was sleeping on her couch. And suddenly we were fifteen and ten years old, staying up past our bedtime, giggling amongst ourselves because we are young and nothing can hurt us. We’re together so everything is okay.
“You just needed somebody on your side.” Sarah exhaled gently, resting her head on my shoulder once we stopped laughing. “Someone to tell you that you weren’t crazy.”
She was right. If it wasn’t for Sarah I might have ended up like our mom; letting my kid come home to find me like that.
The first line of the note read, “To my darling Sarah…”
-
MY PORTION OF THE LETTER WAS A BIT DIFFERENT. To start it was addressed to Claire, just Claire. No darling, or beloved, not even My Poor Claire. She goes on for a couple lines about how she never wanted to be a mother but how we were both “such blessings”.
She talks about Sarah. Arguably more than she should have in my portion of her suicide note.
She talks about giving birth for the first time, the pain, holding Sarah for the first time and how it felt looking into the face of her creation. She writes about Sarah’s eyes and how she could see herself in their deep dark brown.
And then she talks about me.
She said I slipped out of her, like I was “ready to escape her womb.” And when she held me, she cried. I cried too. We wept into one another until we both fell asleep. And when she finally woke up, she found me and got me up too. She stared into my blue eyes begging to find herself in their reflection, but it was just like when she saw me for the first time. She only saw him.
She admits to resenting me for it. She says she knows she failed us but she never apologizes for it. She only takes fault for the mess she will have left for me to find, because she knew I would be the one to do so.
Sarah was a thousand miles away at college. Somehow she was my burden to bear and I was only seventeen.
I tore off the bottom of the letter before I gave it to Sarah. She begged to see it but I refused.
I would not let her humiliate me posthumously.
-
MY DUE DATE HAD CREPT UP ON BOTH OF US. Sarah was going on a work trip. She tried to cancel but I begged her not to. She was all worked up about the baby since I was a due in about a week but I couldn’t let her sacrifice anything else for me-for the baby. She was as gracious as they come but I knew all the prep was taking a toll on her. It would take a toll on anyone. She would never ask for it but I knew I owed her.
“You’ll call me if anything happens right? I’ll be on the first flight back home.”
“Sarah, Go.” I smiled. “Go have fun, we’ll be fine.”
She stared down at my huge belly and winced. “Maybe I can still cancel.”
“Go!” I pointed out the front door. She gave me a reluctant hug and cradled both sides of my face.
“Please take care of yourself.”
I rolled my eyes in response, but she was frozen on the patio. “I’m serious.”
“I know you are. Now go! You’re gonna miss your flight!”
She squealed, grabbed her duffel, and ducked into a taxi.
I saluted her and stayed standing in the threshhold, until I could no longer see her hands frantically waving through the back window. Until she was just a yellow pinprick on the horizon.
My stomach churned as I walked back into the house, closing and turning the deadbolt on the front door.
It was so quiet without her there. Living with someone else seems to create a frequency you never notice until they are missing; a familiar hum, the sound of their heartbeat in the next room over, hiding beneath the air conditioning and traffic sounds outside.
Apart from the evenings that Sarah went out, I rarely had the place to myself. And yet, I couldn’t drink in the solitude. I felt plagued by something like nostalgia, as if she would never return. But things would be different even when she did. Very soon, the baby would arrive and everything would change. A third vibration added, humming something foreign to the both of us.
I looked at the crib in the corner and suddenly felt ill. It was so large, squeezed in tight next to the couch. It took up so much of the living room. Our corner seemed more like a nursery than a shared space. For weeks we had been preparing, imagining our lives as the three of us and I had let my guard down.
I started pacing the length of the apartment. Sarah left in her wake, me and this baby, me and my unbridled thoughts.
I had become something and would become something else so soon. This baby would leave behind a used up shape inside of me, and then what? What would I be when I wasn’t pregnant anymore? What would be when I wasn’t needed? I was staring down a long hall with a funhouse mirror at the end. I didn’t recognize this version of myself, didn’t feel at home in this body, but I accepted it. And now, now I was meant to do it all over again. Become and become undone and become again.
I didn’t feel like a mother should. That moment hadn’t come even though I begged my brain to keep up with my mother shaped body. If this is how all mothers felt, then I was beginning to understand my own. Poisoned fruit, bearing rotten seeds, which would make my child-
That night, the first without Sarah a couple wobbly feet away, I dreamt.
I dreamt of a dog. Inside my dream I woke up in a room that was not mine. There was a feeling in the air, that instinctive understanding of being someplace other. I swung my legs over the bed and into slippers that fit perfectly. I brushed my teeth. I couldn’t see my face, but knew it was there. My hand found the hole on the surface and brushed. I followed the invisible trail from the room, downstairs to the kitchen. And it felt like I had been thrown into someone else’s body. My feet moved before I could understand how foreign it all felt. There was more comfort in being led than interrupting the process. So I leaned into it.
I found the coffee maker. I stood in the kitchen aimlessly, listening the old thing hiss as murky liquid spilled into the pot. I was itching to leave that place, even just the kitchen. I didn’t want the coffee anymore. But when it finally finished I scrambled to the machine.
From the kitchen to the front door, to a homey wrap-around porch facing the rest of the world. Surrounding the house, as far as I could see, wilderness. Dense, looming pines blacking out the view of anything else. It was like the seed of the house was planted there first. It grew up and the forest grew up after to wrap around it, protect it.
I was an intruder.
“This house is not mine.” I said and the words came out of my mouth like glass crunching between my teeth. I forced myself to stand up.
And that’s when the dog appeared, pushing its body through a tiny gap in the woods. It was wolfish and large. I flinched to the left and it matched my steps. I swallowed down the vomit coming up my throat and moved closer.
Heat rolled over my stomach. Shame smashing me over the head, and then a dull pulsing. I could feel my heartbeat on my tongue, my mouth filling with hot saliva.
I didn’t want to go any further but the dog kept coming, closing the distance between us. My hands were heavy, like they were swollen, my arms were aching beneath their weight.
I looked down and found a shot gun in my grasp.
The dog said something and I looked up but I couldn’t make it out. Its voice was familiar in a way that made me flush. I was going to vomit for real. I lifted the gun and peered into the cross hares.
I could read the spite on its furry lips, frothing at the corners, curled into a cruel smile.
It’s mouth moved to start again and then stopped suddenly. Slack-jawed to the side, as if it had been almost blown clean off.
I could smell smoke, and iron, but the gun never went off.
I WOKE UP IN A PUDDLE. I barely had time to think before my body started moving. I must have left a trail from the bed to the bathroom. It happened so fast.
I called out to Sarah once and only felt embarrassed after the fifth time. Then I remembered. She was gone. She was gone and it was happening.
I ran down my short list of people I could call; Elise, Terese, a soft-hearted coworker. I breathed out nervously, and clenched the phone in my hand. Terese had tried to reach out since everything unfolded but I had ignored her. My guts twisted. I couldn’t see her, not even for this.
And so it was settled. I was doing it on my own. Sarah would be proud of me, even if she found out after the fact. I could call her on the way but she was never going to make it in time.
I went to call a cab, while I grabbed the Go-Bag Sarah prepared for me.
Something about the potential for a cab car birth felt right. Sliding out onto the sticky leather, my child; their first look at life with me as a mother. Welcome to the world! I thought. It stinks like gas station coffee and despair!
The cramps were rapidly evolving into contractions.
I swiped out of the car service app on my phone and started a timer.
Fifteen minutes in between then ten.
I practiced my breathing and thought of Sarah as the onslaught in my body continued.
Ten minutes in between then five.
I was sweating like a pig, clinging to the tile floor to cool me down.
Five minutes then one.
I started to cry. There was no cab coming because I hadn’t got the chance to call one. There was no cab coming, because I was not leaving. I couldn’t have stood up even if I wanted to. The contractions had come on like a swarm of wasps, attacking relentlessly, rapidly.
The bathroom floor would have to do and I would have to do it alone.
The animal part of my brain lit up like fireworks, casting the rest of my consciousness in shadow.
I lurched onto my hands and knees instinctively, and began to push.
I felt superhuman and somehow so incredibly mortal at the same time. It was a feat, completely incomprehensible before, and now I was doing it. There were no more barriers in my mind because my body would not allow it. I was going to go forward because there was no turning around this time, no running away.
I howled. I made noises I’d never heard a human make in my life, and yet they were coming out of me.
I don’t know how long it took. I just know what happened after. When I tucked my hand between my legs and felt her slide out of me and onto the black and white checkered tile of Sarah’s bathroom floor.
-
Everything happened slow at first, like a faucet leaking, dripping small drops into a puddle beneath itself. She was small and red all over, frosted with patches with mucus. She didn’t cry for a while. I held my breath. And tried to decipher the stirring in my chest. I crept over to her, inspected her closely but I did not touch her.
Finally she erupted. The noise was worse than anything I let out only moments before. She wailed and out of her tiny form came the sounds of an adult woman, sobbing.
I was numb, from the waist down, the searing pain now an ever present throbbing, burning down below. I crawled into the corner, trying to get as far away from her as possible. The crying kept on, it drove into my ears, and before I knew it I was crying too. I think I never stopped crying during the whole thing. The tears streamed down my face, hot, hotter than the sweat already covering me.
She began to writhe on the floor. My hands flung to my face to shield my eyes but I couldn’t help myself. I peered through. I watched as her limbs grew out beside her. Her head swelled. Her hair grew. Her teeth popped out from her skull until she had full rows present and ready.
She looked at me and it was awful. She looked at me and I knew she recognized me. There was anger there. Written all over her face which in a matter of seconds had become fully aged. A woman stood in front of me. Not a child, not an infant, a woman; half of me and half of Elise, in the flesh, twenty something years old.
I shook, mouth opened in perpetual “O”. Oh God, Oh no, Oh, O.
She stopped crying and squatted down beside me.
“Claire.” She said. My name. Not Mother.
“I’m sorry.” It rattled out of my mouth.
I couldn’t bare to look at her face. It was like staring into the mouth of god, and finding razor sharp teeth. Was this motherhood?
“Your womb is frigid.” She spat.
I could feel my tongue drying out in my open jaw.
“T-this isn’t right. You-you have to go back in.” I said wiping my face frantically.
“I cant.” She replied plainly.
“You liked it in there, didn’t you? Yeah?” I put on a voice I didn’t recognize. An imitation of something not quite maternal, like I was talking to an animal and not my daughter.
She lurched forward slipping in the amniotic puddle. She spied the umbilical cord still connecting us and snatched it up.
“You didn’t want me. And now-now that your’e free you want me to climb back inside?” That face again, my face, so full of fury staring back into another. “You think I couldn’t feel your disgust-the unfiltered disdain coursing through you, pumping life into me?”
She gathered the cord and stood over me. “Get up.”
My whole body shook, recoiled from her.
“Get. Up.”
“NO!” I barked.
She yanked the umbilical cord and I vomited, my vision going black around the sides. The rest of the cord slid out of me with the placenta on the end. She looked down at it, at me. She hung her head. Both of us were shivering, sticky with fluid and tears.
“Please don’t leave me.” I whispered, ashamed to have said it. My body melted further into the floor. I crawled across the cold tile and collapsed at her feet. The sweat on my forehead mingled with the fluid on her toes. I could feel her pulse through her veins, the vibration under her skin, and I thought of Sarah; of our three heartbeats. I imagined our pulses humming together.
“Please don’t.” I begged.
“I don’t understand.” She sighed, reaching out and stroking my hair.
“You don’t have to. It’s okay if you don’t, because I do-I finally do.” I grappled up her leg, steadying myself once we were face to face.
I saw myself in her in the sheen of her wet eyes; livefeed of that very moment projected onto a fishbowl.
I didn’t look like me or I had forgotten what I looked like before all this.
My eyes were drawn down, heavy with tears, the pupils searching wildly, digging around her features. My nose was red, and my lips were puffy. I was a creature. A thing that pregnancy had made me. And now that she was here, I knew that I had to undo it. I had known the whole time.
I reached out and grabbed both sides of her head. She yelped and tried to pull away from me. I squeezed down, and she screamed beneath the pressure, full bodied adult screams.
I covered her mouth. “Shh. It’s okay. Your’e gonna be okay.” I cooed, and it tasted sour on my tongue.
She lashed around chomping on my hands, but I kept going. I splayed my fingers out and spread them across her face. Her features like wet clay, began to swirl around, and muddle. She stopped yelling. There was no mouth to yell from.
I palmed the head into the neck and that into the torso. I tangled the limbs like arms of a hoodie, knotted around the waist. Then I did the same to the legs. I smashed it all up until I had a cantaloupe sized ball of flesh with a string at the end. The umbilical cord and the placenta, I forced those into the mix as well. Then I collapsed to the floor, balancing the thing in my lap.
I was exhausted. I knew what I had to do, and what I had just done. Only it appeared to me like a vision. A feverish mirage. A cough syrup induced nightmare.
But I continued.
I drew the lump of meat towards my mouth, then I stopped.
Someone was unlocking the front door. Sarah was home early. I hadn’t checked my phone, of course I hadn’t. She must have called and I had missed it. I stared at the bathroom, the blood on my hands and legs, on the floor.
“Claire?” Sarah called from the living room.
Now or never.
I began palming the flesh until it stretched out into a long skinny length and then I started feeding it down my throat.
“Claire, hun, are you okay? Your’e freaking me out.”
She was getting closer.
I watched myself in the mirror as I did it. As she disappeared back into me.
“Claire?” She was knocking on the door. “Open up. Are you alright?”
I tried to speak, but it made me gag. I needed to finish it. I pressed my full weight against the bathroom door. I stayed there until the last of her slithered past my lips.
I WOKE UP IN A HOSPITAL ROOM.
“She’s awake!” I could hear Sarah at my side. She was brushing my arm and crying. Someone else was there too. Elise and his mom I think.
“Oh thank god!” He cried. They were all crying.
Everything washed over me in an instant. I took a deep breath, drawing in the sterile scent of the hospital.
My eyes started to focus and that was when I could take the room in. It was glorious.
Flowers covered every surface, most of them wilting. They were wrapped in brown paper, iridescent plastic, in vases and hanging on the wall. Gift baskets piled up by the door with small balloons poking out that said, “Get Well Soon!”. There was a stack of cards on the table beside the bed, all of them in envelopes that were some shade of pink.
I pressed my arms into the mattress and tried to sit up. I wanted to see it all, but everyone immediately rushed to my aid, shushing and guiding me back down into the bed.
“You need to rest darlin’. Don’t want momma getting all worked up!”
Momma.
I laughed a bit. It was less of a laugh and more like a gravely puff of air ejected from somewhere deep within me.
Everyone looked uncomfortable. They didn’t want to tell me what was going on, or they just didn’t want to acknowledge what I had done.
Sarah had that look on her face. The one she wore when she would bring up our mom. It was like two faces laid on top of one another.
Elise looked worried, but relieved to be there at all. Sarah must have called him. I would berate her about that later. Or maybe she called Terese which would be a lesser offense. She called her and Terese called Elise. Classic.
By the look on Terese’s face I thought I might be right. She was beaming. Probably riding the high that Elise and I might end up together again. She was wrong.
I struggled to sit up with everyone buzzing around me. I swatted them off and finally I was able to see the whole scene.
It felt good to have them in the room with me-worrying about me.
The sun came through the blinds, bouncing off of the crinkly plastic on the gift baskets, shooting through the different vases, casting the whole room in a multicolored glow. I scanned the place from top to bottom. I admired the furrowed brows of my visitors, coming in and out. I studied the banner hanging across the door. It’s a girl.
I pulled the blankets off me and reached down to my stomach.
I felt it before I saw it. I couldn’t bring myself to look.
“Oh Claire. She’s okay. You two have had a long couple of days.” Sarah placed her hand on top of mine. On top of my distended belly.
“What-“ My eyes darted around the room. My beautiful room, with its beautiful colors and it’s beautiful people who weren’t there for me at all but for the thing inside me. “What’s going on?”
“You’re almost due, Claire. You get to meet your little girl very soon!”
“No-“
The tears started up again. A faucet, a fountain, a flood of tears, hot and ripe with the memory of the her birth-her consumption. I could still taste her on my mouth. Then I felt it move.
It was her.
Her, making more room inside that bleeding shape within me. Planting herself somewhere I couldn’t pluck out.
I began to scream.
I opened my mouth and it was the sound of an infant that poured out.
I wish I had something more profound to say coming out of all of this. I wish I could say I feel confident going back to where I came from. But I don’t. I feel like a dog with its tail between its legs. I feel like a failure. I feel ejected from my body like I misplaced my soul-like I died and came back empty.
I keep wishing I could go back in time. I think I’ve been doing that since I was eighteen-maybe twenty. And again when I was twenty-two. Now I’m almost twenty-four. Four months out from my birthday and I’m only wishing for home-to go back, like it’s gonna change things, put all the pieces back together, undo the past five years, bring you back. I keep saying I know that it’s not possible but there’s a part of me that’s bigger than I’d like to admit that hopes I’m wrong.
The truth is I know this unsettledness lives inside of me. Passed down to me from my mother. It doesn’t matter where I go, I will want. Someone said the grass is greener where you water it so I guess I’m just turning my nose up everywhere until I find some place where the grass is already fertilized. I want it easy. I want roots in the ground. I want to be eighteen. I want to fight with my brother, and laugh about it when we’re older. I want to drink with my friends and smoke my first cigarette again. I want the future to be far away and my body to be invincible. I want, I want, I want, and I want.
I want to swallow the whole universe and keep everyone and everything safe inside of me until I have all this figured out.
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